Social Media in Practice: The Challenges of Using Facebook in Higher Education.

Facebook, as a medium of social network, has been used by people worldwide in their daily life. The aim of this study was to investigate the difficulties students faced at the higher education level when using Facebook, from the students? perspective. Facebook, as one of the social media tools, can be used to enhance students? learning. This study was conducted at one of the higher educational institution in Jordan, Al Al-Bayt University. Participants of the study were 49 higher education students who enrolled in Computer Educational course. The study also investigated the challenges of using Facebook as a learning tool that may relate to the students? duration of years of study, past experience with Facebook and their majoring field. A survey instrument was created by the researcher. It has 15 items that address issues that the students might encounter in using social media such as Facebook. Instructor ought to create a Facebook site to be utilised for the class purposes. All students have created their respective Facebook site for the same reason. At the end of the semester, the survey instrument was administered to collect information about the study and finally the outcome showed that students faced some difficulties due to security issues, lack of sufficient time for learning and managing activities and slow internet connection. It revealed that the students? duration of years of study, past experience with Facebook and their majoring field have no influence on the difficulties faced by the students when using the Facebook application.